Our Sunday Message

The Spirituality of Friendship: Mark 2:1-12
Rev. Dr. Kenneth A. Corr
February 19, 2006
Seventh Sunday After Epiphany

  Jesus had returned to Capernaum and was teaching at home. Every seat in the house was taken. Some were sitting on the floor. Some were sitting in the window sills. Some were standing along the walls. Some were lined up in the door and even out of the door. The scribes were there in the crowd taking careful and copious notes. Every word was being recorded. Who was this unlicensed teacher who could cast out demons and heal lepers?
  At first, no one noticed, but when the dirt started falling on their heads they started looking up. It was just an annoyance and Jesus kept on teaching. But eventually, the noise and the dust and the distraction were too much and Jesus stopped. Every eye in the place looked up when the last piece of roofing came off and the stretcher began the slow descent into the living room.
  The little group in those choice seats at the front had to quickly scurry to make room. People were suddenly shuffling and pushing just to get out of the way. Finally, the man was lying right in front of Jesus. The Scripture says, “When Jesus saw their faith. . .”
  Notice that carefully. “When Jesus saw their faith. . .” The paralyzed man was right in front of him, but Jesus “saw their faith. . .” He looked up and saw the four faces peering down from the hole in the roof and in that moment, “(he) saw their faith.” Can you see them? That’s the image that I want you to focus on this morning.
  I am very aware that the action of the friends is not the main idea of this text. I am very aware that Mark’s concern in these early stories is to show how Jesus’ actions continually put him at odds with the religious leaders. I am very aware that Mark’s central theme is Jesus’ authority to forgive sins and to heal. But having acknowledged that, I want to focus on these four men whose faces were peering down from the ceiling. Can you see them?
  “When (Jesus) saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’” I can’t explain the theology of that. It was their faith and his sins. Don’t ask me. I don’t know. I am just reporting what the Scripture says. I don’t know what to say about it. But I can say that without their faith, the paralytic man would have never been healed and forgiven. And I can say that we need friends like that. Whether you have thought about it or not, we don’t make it very far in our spiritual life without friends.
  Think of how different this story is from the man at the pool at the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem. This man was also paralyzed. He had been there for thirty-eight years. Jesus asked him if he wanted to be healed. Do you remember what he answered? “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool.”1 It wasn’t faith that he lacked. It was friends.
Think about the friends who have helped you along the way. Can you name them? It was a friend, Reid Doster, who was the first person to say to me, “Ken, I think God might be calling you to preach.” My friends, John Lockhart, Curtis Freeman, and Gary Furr have been positive role models for me as a pastor and father.
  In these eleven years that I have been your pastor, Ray Hatton has been a steadfast friend. Carol Richardson and Richard Wright have become more than staff members. They are good friends.
We don’t know in the story if the paralytic had faith, but we do know that he had friends.
  One day, a very wise rabbi sat by a warm fire teaching his disciples. One of the students asked, “Teacher, what is the meaning of community?” The rabbi thought for a long time. No one dared to ask a question while the rabbi was thinking. He thought for so long that the fire had burned down to glowing embers.
  Finally, without saying a word, the rabbi got up, took some tongs, and removed one hot ember. He set the hot ember alone by itself and in just a short time, it had completely burned out.
  The rabbi then turned his attention to the disciples and said, “That it the meaning of community.”2
  Whether you have thought about it or not, we don’t make it very far in our spiritual life without friends. This morning, I want to think about the spirituality of friendship. Is it spiritual to be a friend?
  Who were these four friends and what can we learn from them? The Scripture actually says very little. The NRSV simply says, “Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man.” The Greek text says it even more simply, “They came, bringing to him a paralyzed man.” The text says nothing else about these men; nothing about who they were, nothing about their relationship to the paralyzed man, nothing except they had great faith. How did Jesus know that they had great faith? What was the evidence of their faith? Did Jesus know them from some other time?
  I believe that the apostle James helps us to answer that when he says, “I will show you my faith by my works.”3 These men demonstrated that they had great faith by their great work.
  Look again at what they did. The Scripture says, “When they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they . . .” What? They said, “Well, we tried. Maybe another day. Sorry that it did not work out. We did the best that we could.” And who would have blamed them?
  Is that what they did? Listen again to the text “When they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him.”
  I don’t know who thought of it, but you would have to be pretty desperate to remove the roof. I don’t know what the others said about the idea, but you would have to be pretty determined to get the man on a stretcher up on the roof to get him through the hole. I don’t know what they agreed, but you would have to be pretty convinced to risk life, limb, and liability to get the man to Jesus through a hole in the roof. I don’t know what their doctrines were, but it took great faith to get their friend to Jesus.
  “When Jesus saw their faith. . .” These friends were convinced that Jesus could help their friend. These friends were not about to let this opportunity pass by. These friends were not going to take a chance of missing Jesus.
  We need friends like that. We need friends who care enough to take a risk. We need friends who care enough to sacrifice.
I’ve told you before about Heidi Neumark. She is the pastor of the Transfiguration Lutheran Church in the South Bronx. In her book Breathing Space, she tells about the year she took off from college to work in a Rural Mission program on John’s Island off the coast of South Carolina.
  It was there that she met Miss Ellie who lived in a one-room wooden home at the end of a dirt road. Heidi says, “I never could find out Miss Ellie’s precise age, but it was somewhere between ninety and one hundred. . . . She still chopped her own firewood, stacked in neat piles by the house.”4
  Miss Ellie had a friend named Netta that she liked to visit. It was quite a long walk for Miss Ellie through fields of tall sweet grass. “Poor Miss Ellie, I thought, old and arthritic, having to walk all that way, pushing through the thick summer heat, not to mention the snakes.”5
  Heidi knew that the distance could be cut short if there was a bridge over the little stream that separated Miss Ellie’s house from her friend Netta. So, during the summer, Heidi enlisted some men to build a simple wooden plank bridge.
  Near the end of the summer, the job was complete and Heidi took Miss Ellie out to show her the work that they had done. “‘Look!’ I shouted, ‘a shortcut for you to visit Netta.’”
  Heidi was surprised that Miss Ellie did not share her excitement. Finally, she said, “‘Child, I don’t need a shortcut.’ And she told about all the friends she kept up with on her way to visit Netta. . . .‘Child,’ she said again, ‘Can’t take shortcuts if you want friends in this world. Shortcuts don’t mix with love.’”6
  “When Jesus saw their faith. . .” There was no shortcut on the roof that day. Somebody had to pay for it. Somebody had to fix it. Somebody had to answer for it. Jesus saw their faith.
  We don’t make it very far in our spiritual life without friends like that.
  This morning, I want you to do two things in response to this sermon. First of all, I want you to thank God for the friends in your life who have refused to take shortcuts. Make a list of the people who have influenced you by their friendship.
  And then, secondly, ask God to help you become that kind of friend.

1 This story is found in John 5:2-9.
2 Heidi Neumark, Breathing Space, p. 61.
3 James 2:18b.
4 Neumark, p. 17.
5 Ibid., p. 17.
6 Ibid., p. 18.